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I dropped the ball, but I still brought you flaming pumpkins

My intent was to write a spectacularly awesome post about something Halloween-y.

Here’s what happened instead: the spouse disappeared into a black hole at work, the kids had a school holiday, and I interviewed and accidentally got an extra job.

I did come across a few nifty ideas, though. Below are links for all kinds of activities involving pumpkins–for everyone from the four-and-under crew up to adults. If you need to take a sneak peek at flaming pumpkins–which I totally understand–scroll down to the photo of a pumpkin in a body bag.

I’m a Big Fan of using a drill on pumpkins, and Play at Home Mom has a simple project that even very young children can do with supervision:

Though I generally keep tiny people and hammers in separate rooms, I’ve found that when young children are given one to use for a very specific purpose, everyone has a great time. After all, hammering can be very zenlike and therapeutic. The Magic Onions describes how to decorate a pumpkin using hammers, nails, and yarn.

Now, for older peeps, I am wild about ink designs on white pumpkins. Haven’t found a good set of stencils, or suggestions for transferring patterns onto the pumpkins. I’m sure Martha has some ideas, but of you happen to have one or two, please share them in the comments.

As long as we’re discussing white pumpkins…if I had free reign to decorate as I wished, my yard would look like this:

Apparently from Connecticut Wedding Planner

Enough dithering. My most important discovery this week was a whole host of interesting ideas and tips at Extreme Pumpkins.The website was put together by Tom Nardone, who has written Extreme Pumpkins, and the surprisingly titled Extreme Pumpkins II. Once there,you can find creepy things like this:

This freaks me out every time I see it.

ExtremePumpkins.com also has the best video I’ve seen about how to carve a pumpkin–including everything from what tools to use, to how to scoop out the insides without making a ginormous mess. Here’s the link.

As promised, the site also explains how to make a seriously flaming pumpkin. This is for when emergency flares do not make your jack-o-lanterns glow brightly enough. After all, flares only burn for about 15 minutes, and the flame seems to stay mostly inside the pumpkin. Big deal.

No, if you want to really attract attention–and maybe even cause a neighborhood tragedy–word is, you need to soak a roll of toilet paper in kerosene for 24 hours, pop it into jack’s head, and run about two miles away. I’m not sanctioning this idea, by the way.